5 things I think about the latest poll of St. Pete Mayor’s race

A poll last week offered the first look into the status of St. Petersburg’s crowded mayoral race, offering little good news to anyone other than Charlie Crist and Maria Scruggs.

The poll found Crist leading incumbent Mayor Ken Welch in a hypothetical head-to-head General Election matchup and in a Primary field, with Welch firmly in the No. 2 spot.

In some ways, the poll confirmed what I had already suspected — that this race would come down to Crist and Welch, and that Welch is in trouble. In other ways, it offered insight into voting populations that could make a difference.

In any case, here are five things I think about the St. Pete Polls survey released Thursday.

Welch is losing to a non-candidate

Possibly the top takeaway in the polling is that Crist leads Welch both head-to-head and among a crowded field. Crist does so without even being a formal candidate, with no money yet spent on media, and even as Welch goes full bore using the bully pulpit of his office to drum up support for four more years. Look no further than Welch’s recent State of the City address, where he went directly after Crist.

Pit against one another in a hypothetical General Election, the poll put Crist ahead, at 36% support to 31% for Welch. Crist also led the entire Primary field, with no other candidate besides himself and Welch breaking into double digits.

This is a remarkable showing considering Welch’s forward-facing role, paired with the fact that Crist’s massive operation has not yet pivoted to any actual campaigning. And the poll showed there are still plenty of voters to reach when Crist does put his campaign apparatus into action, but more on that in a moment.

Welch is not just vulnerable, he’s deeply vulnerable

While Welch was above water in the poll as it relates to job approval, it was only just barely, with 39% of voters indicating they approved of the Mayor’s job performance compared to nearly 32% who don’t.

It’s good for Welch that he’s not underwater, but staying just barely afloat isn’t where an incumbent wants to be mere months from Election Day. Former Mayor Bill Foster, for example, enjoyed a 54% approval rating at this point in his re-election campaign in 2013, yet he went on to lose to Rick Kriseman.

A 32% disapproval rating, simply put, means that as of right now there are 32% of voters Welch ostensibly has no chance of winning over, leaving him with a smaller pool of voters to woo.

Crist is capitalizing key demographics

Much will be said about the Black vote in this race. Welch made history as the city’s first African American Mayor, and he remains popular among his Black constituency. But Welch is bleeding some votes to Scruggs, while Crist performs well in other demographics that carry big weight in both August and November, including White voters and voters across the political continuum.

Any advantage Welch appears to have based on his strong lead among Black voters is eclipsed by Crist’s advantage among partisan and nonpartisan voters. Welch leads Crist 55% to 16% among Black voters, but a full 29% are still undecided, indicating Crist has room to weaken that gap. And Crist leads by double digits among Republican and independent voters, while only slightly trailing Welch among Democrats.

Once Crist is actually in the race, which is expected to happen in April, he has a major cash advantage to begin reaching voters who are still on the fence, likely improving on this poll’s results.

The non-Welch candidates

City Council member Brandi Gabbard had the strongest showing among the Welch alternatives not named Crist. But even there, she sat at just 6% support.

That has to be a big disappointment for Gabbard, who doesn’t appear to have capitalized on much, if any, of the anti-Welch vote.

A single-digit showing for a sitting elected official is not a good sign to the donor class needed to invest in her campaign. It’s hard to imagine how Gabbard, given her low support, gets the financial resources to connect with enough voters to get ahead of either Crist or Welch to sneak into the top two in August and head to a General Election in November.

Even if she managed that, she likely would find herself in a scenario similar to what happened with Robert Blackmon in 2021, where he narrowly managed a runoff berth only to get clobbered in the General Election.

At this point, she may need to think hard about whether staying in the race is viable.

Meanwhile, the race is chock full of other also-rans. Kevin Batdorf landed exactly where you might expect, within the margin of error. While I expect his support will grow slightly as he knocks on doors and impresses various small groups around town, such as talks to neighborhood associations or even through participation in debates, Batdorf’s ceiling is likely in the ball park of 5 percentage points.

Jim Large’s prospects, based on polling, are about as grim. This showing is likely as good as it gets for him, at 4% support, because even as he ramps up his campaign he will no doubt face reminders of the sexual harassment allegations leveled against him that muddied the end of his long tenure as the city’s Fire Chief. The more people hear about him, the more they’ll learn about those allegations.

Besides Crist, the only other person who should be happy with this poll is Scruggs, who appears to be picking up significant portion of Black voters who are dissatisfied with Welch.

The poll doesn’t offer her a path to victory — that’s not going to happen — but her campaign does offer a chance to earn a seat at the table for the next decade. A high single-digit finish would get her that.

All of this could change

With all of that in mind, it’s important to remember that polls are merely a snapshot in time. They reflect sentiments right now, based on things that are affecting voters at the time they’re asked the questions.

Campaigns are dynamic, and good ones react to the ebb and flow of issues and voter sentiment. A lot could change between April and when mail ballots begin going out in late July.

Welch has an opportunity to use this polling information to target voters needed to improve his station. There are still plenty of voters to reach, as I mentioned earlier. But unfortunately for Welch, it doesn’t look like he’ll have the resources to compete at the level he’ll need to in both the Primary and General Elections.

At the rate he’s been fundraising, including having funds stolen, compared to the breakneck speed for which Crist is collecting checks, Welch likely will only have enough to run a minimal media campaign for the Primary, while saving his cash for the General under the assumption that the power of incumbency will carry him through to November even without a big spend.

For Crist, he now faces this question: Does he go for broke and try to win it all in August, or does he play it safe and prepare for Round 2?

New fundraising reports will be coming out in the second week of April, and will offer us new clues into whether Welch has upped his fundraising game and whether any possible underdogs emerge to watch.

But for now, this poll continues to paint the St. Pete mayoral race as the Crist/Welch show.

___

Ed. Note: Michelle Todd Schorsch is the Chair of St. Pete Shines, a political committee expected to back Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor. Todd Schorsch is married to Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics.